Presidential Palace Historical Site

The Presidential Palace of Vietnam, located in the city of Hanoi, was built between 1900 and 1906 to house the French Governor-General of Indochina. It was constructed by Auguste Henri Vildieu, the official French architect for Vietnam. Like most French Colonial architecture, the palace is pointedly European- the only visual cues that it is located in Vietnam at all are mango trees growing on the grounds.

When Vietnam achieved independence in 1954, Ho Chi Minh refused to live in the grand structure for symbolic reasons, although he still received state guests there, and he eventually built a traditional Vietnamese stilt house and carp pond on the grounds. Today, Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum stands nearby and the Presidential Palace remains part of Hanoi’s cultural core. The palace hosts government meetings. It is not open to the public, although one may walk around the grounds for a fee.

Presidential Palace Historical Site (Vietnamese: Khu di tích Phủ Chủ tịch), which is located in Hanoi, Vietnam, is the place where Ho Chi Minh lived and worked in most of his revolutionary life (from December 19, 1954 to September 2, 1969). This site was listed by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Vietnam in 1975.